Civil Society Organisations advocating for children rights are calling for the fulfilment of national commitments on their various privileges in the ongoing discussions on the 2025-2026 budget.

This comes as it emerged that Parliament has diverted billions of shillings meant for public school learners to cover the cost of public participation, administering and invigilating national examinations in the upcoming 2025/26 financial year

Hosted by Plan International and World Vision, yesterday the organisations raised fundamental concerns regarding unmet policy promises for children including reductions witnessed in the budget for the coming Financial Year.

The CSOs under the Joining Forces Alliance (JFA) were reacting to a report by the National Assembly, Budget and Appropriations Committee (BAC), which reveals that the lawmakers prioritised the examination process, which they said  requires Sh11 billion, a figure that had been included in the National Treasury’s original budget estimates.

“We are already witnessing a situation where children’s voices on their concerns and the National Treasury’s guidelines in proposed expenditure for their rights are increasingly being overlooked in the budgetary reviews by the National Treasury,” the JFA members said at a Nairobi hotel.  

The Alliance brings together the World Vision, Child Fund, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, SOS, Save the Children, Mtoto News and Plan International.

Besides seeking to know what’s in store for the country’s minors in the next Financial Year, the CSOs punched holes in the current financial year; 2024-2025 budget that’s being implemented seeking to know how much was allocated for them.

“We are supposed to ask ourselves, in the context of children’s rights, the right to education, healthcare, clean and safe water, and free from hunger, what is the expenditure on those rights?” posed the organisations, who also sought to know whether the children are benefiting from those expenditures.